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Quote by Billy Collins

“I'm trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place to another, and it's usually from a realistic place, to a place in the imagination.”

Quote by Billy Collins

Author

Billy Collins is a renowned American poet, born on March 22, 1941. His poetry is known for its simplicity, humor, and profound insights, making it popular among readers. Collins served as the United States Poet Laureate and taught at several universities. more

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“Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school - there's little time to resist the poem.”

Ifs Kind Littles Said Happens School Listening High School Radio Listeners Shields Little Time

Author:Billy Collins

“Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying 'what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?' And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.”

People Pleasure Offers What Is The Meaning

Author:Billy Collins

“The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.”

Firsts Ends Used Lines Keys Reader Bases Used To Be Tone Rhyme Dna Signatures Meter

Author:Billy Collins

“The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.”

Ifs Writing Records Discovery Letters Instruments Agendas Pens Resignation

Author:Billy Collins

“The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.”

Thinking Writing Kind Real Happens Form Reader Entry Travel Writing Real Questions

Author:Billy Collins

“There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.”

Ifs Want Mean Form Enjoy Difficult Interesting Difficulty If I Could Penetrate

Author:Billy Collins

“There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own, but what it is I just don't know.”

Knows Courses Translate

Author:Robert Fitzgerald

“Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.”

Wells Different Matter Certain Language Understood Greek Spokes Latin Quantity French Language

Author:Robert Fitzgerald

“What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.”

Doe Particular Performers Translators

Author:Robert Fitzgerald

“Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.”

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Author:Robert Fitzgerald